"The best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good..."

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

The experts show their ignorance

Paul Erdman of Market Watch has asserted that India was not an al Qaeda strike:

This raises the question of whether the world's largest democracy, which is now enjoying a huge economic boom, is the next target in al Qaeda's global conspiracy aimed at those who do not accept the tenets of fundamentalist Islam, be they Christian, Hindu, or even moderate Arabs who have aligned themselves with the West.

The answer to that question is no.

What is happening in India is a regional matter, related to the issue of who will ultimately control Kashmir. The instigators of these attacks in Mumbai are militant Islamic fundamentalists who want to wrest control of Kashmir from India, and either form an independent Islamic nation, or fold it into neighboring Islamic Pakistan.

This, then, is just another in a long series of such incidents over control of this region just south of the westernmost end of the Himalayan mountain range. They date back to the first Kashmir war between India and Pakistan in 1947, which was followed by two more such wars in 1965 and 1971.

He says this with such certainty. Let's ignore that, because it is not well founded.

What could it mean if al Qaeda is entering the India/Pakistan fray over Kashmir?

Ah! Let's ask questions. Seek out information. Wait for more complete understanding. Then, maybe we'll learn something. Maybe we can even apply that to our understanding of the global war on terrorism. Perhaps we could save lives if we actually looked the evil square in the eye and realized that the only match to al Qaeda's brutality is its ambition.

New York - Indian intelligence officials have named a suspect they believe may be linked to the Mumbai rail blasts, according to a report on CNBC on Tuesday.

Officials quoted in the report say Dawood Ibrahim, an Indian Muslim with ties to al-Qaeda, was considered a suspect in the attacks.

The US treasury department designated Ibrahim as a terrorist as part of its international sanctions programme, CNBC said.

The seven bombings killed at least 135 people and injured over 300.

No one has claimed responsibility for the bombings.

Honestly, to hell with these so called terrorism experts expounding their drivel. If a person stands in front of a camera and makes a clown of himself or herself concerning tonight's All Star game, little to no harm is done. These experts are very confident in what they know. Yet, any independent observer that's read a report or two could caution against leaping to conclusions on the authors' of this terrible violence.

Either this was planned by al Qaeda, planned with al Qaeda, or meant to look like it.

That is a certainty. The unfortunate reality is probably a robust al Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent. This shows us with great clarity how important Afghanistan and Iraq -- countless countries and regions, actually -- are to the entire world.